Bid Estimation Tools

Bid Research

[zandini]

Where can I find some decent bid estimation tools. I usually start if low bids and optimise them as I get more data as times goes on.

Thanks

Mark

[briggidere]

It's a bit tricky to get any accurate data without testing them live in the auctions. There are too many variables. Account history, location, time, QS etc.

If you are starting with low bids and then going from there you'll be OK as you won't get any shocks if the average cpc's for the industry are too high.

[arieng]

While I agree with briggidere in some cases, I usually counsel to go the other direction --> start bids off high and bring them down over time.

The reasoning is that Quality Score has become such a huge part of what you actually pay, and clickthrough rate is the largest contributor to QS.

If you start with a low bid on a competitive keyword, you'll be getting fringe placement at a low price. While that's a great place to be in some cases it can also lead to a poor QS, which increases actual bid prices and makes it harder to move up through the ranks over time. On the other hand, a high initial bid price will give you better initial placement and help your initial quality score. Once you have a good quality score, you can bring down your bids and have a higher ranking than you would have otherwise at the same bid price.

This can be tricky though. It has to be monitored closely so costs don't run away from you, and you have to have a budget to support it.

[briggidere]

The main part of the QS is the CTR. When they look at the CTR they also look at the industry average CTR for that ad position. If you have a higher than average CTR at a certain position you will be rewarded with a higher quality score.

[arieng]

I know that CTR is adjusted by ad position, but in my experience I've had much more success with achieving good QS with high volume, high clickthrough ads than ads with marginalized positions.